E. Denise Billups

Some debts span centuries. Some daughters refuse to pay. Eva Beauford tried to cheat a blood covenant older than this country. Using her own potent blood, she believed she could protect the man chosen for her before she drew her first breath and shatter the pact that has bound Beauford daughters for two centuries. Veidrel knew. And the ancient entity answered the only way it knows. With a blight. Now black ash falls on Beauford Grove like snow.
The soil turns to ash. The people are falling sick with blackened veins beneath their skin, just as they did in Haiti two centuries ago, when a plantation dared to defy the covenant. Rafe, Eva's scientist, her partner, her heart, is Veidrel's now, possessed and slipping further away with every passing hour. Eva is pregnant with a child that shouldn't exist. Born of the ritual, carrying both Beauford and Durand blood, and an inheritance her ancestors predicted and Veidrel never anticipated.
A child who could end this war. If Eva can survive long enough to bring him into the world. The Grove kept its end of a dark bargain for two hundred years. Now the debt comes due, and Eva Beauford refuses to pay. Book Two of the Beauford Grove Series